ST. LOUIS -- For the third time this season, Missouri State sophomore guard Casey Garrison has been named State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week, the league office announced Monday. Garrison picked up the award for the period Feb. 22-28, after averaging 25.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 4.0 steals in lifting the Lady Bears to their 18th and 19th victories of the season.

Against Evansville, Garrison scored 21 of her 27 points in the first 12 minutes of the second half as part of a 29-10 MSU run that ultimately proved to be the difference in the Lady Bears' 83-60 win. Garrison scored the first five points of the spurt and 10 of MSU's next 13 points over a three-minute span to put the Lady Bears on top for good. After knocking down a jumper to start the outburst, Garrison intercepted a UE pass, drove length of the court and drew a foul while converting a layup for a momentum-turning three-point play. She buried her second shot from beyond the arc with 15:08 to play to push the MSU advantage to 44-35, then connected from the field four more times over the next seven minutes, as the Lady Bears would stretch the margin to 62-45 with just over eight minutes left. Garrison also placed her name alongside one of women's college basketball's all-time greats when she scored on a feed from Christiana Shorter with 14:18 to play in the game to top the 1,000-point mark in just her 57th career game to become the second-fastest to reach the mark in Missouri Valley Conference history, trailing only NCAA Division I scoring leader and fellow Lady Bear Jackie Stiles. In all, Garrison scored a game-high 27 points, going 9-of-12 from the field in the second half, to go along with six rebounds, five steals and four assists.

That performance followed a 24-point effort in Friday's win over Southern Illinois, in which she helped the Lady Bears build an 11-point halftime lead with 15 first-half points. She hit on 9-of-18 shots from the field and 3-of-5 from three-point range while pulling down six boards and recording three steals.

The 14th-leading scorer in the nation, Garrison leads the Valley in scoring (19.7 ppg) and steals (2.8 spg), while ranking among the conference's top 10 individual performers in 11 statistical categories in MVC play. She is the only Division I women's basketball player to rank among the country's top 30 in scoring, assists (5.3 apg) and steals per game.

The honor is the fourth Player of the Week award and the eighth career MVC weekly citation overall for Garrison. The Bolivar, Mo., product picked up the same honor Nov. 30, after her 35-point, 17 rebound performance at Arkansas State (Nov. 27), and again on Dec. 14, following her triple-double against Tulsa (Dec. 8).

In addition to her first MVC Player of the Week honor on Jan. 19, 2009, Garrison received recognition as the conference's Newcomer of the Week on four occasions en route to wrapping up the league's Freshman of the Year award and First-Team All-MVC honors in 2008-09.

Missouri State (19-8, 11-5 MVC) will wrap up the regular season with a two-game road trip this week, beginning with a 7:05 p.m., contest Thursday (March 4) at UNI.